Marketer's Space - Holiday season email marketing tips you should know – Zoho Campaigns

Marketer's Space - Holiday season email marketing tips you should know – Zoho Campaigns

Hello Marketers!

Welcome back to another post in Marketer's Space!

'Tis the season—that time of the year everyone eagerly anticipates. While most look forward to relaxing, marketers will be super-busy from late November to early January. Mistakes can happen in email marketing, unbeknownst to you; let's see how you can avoid them.

Warm up during the cold season 

Since you'll be sending lots of campaigns, make sure you're warming up your sender domain. You might've been sending only 1,000 campaigns per day before, but you can't just send 10,000 campaigns per day during the season without proper warm-up. Slowly increase the number of campaigns you send on a daily basis to build up your domain reputation. Instead of sending 25,000 campaigns in a day, split it equally over a few days. Otherwise:
  • Your domain could hit spam traps.
  • Your domain could face email throttling.
  • Your emails could get blocked temporarily by email clients like Gmail, Yahoo, and Outlook.
It's also not advisable to use a brand-new sender domain, as it won't have built any reputation among email clients; it'll be a cold domain that needs to be warmed up.

Domain authentication  

If you haven't authenticated your domain yet in Zoho Campaigns, you must do it before you send any campaign. Publish Zoho Campaigns' SPF, DKIM, and DMARC records in your domain provider's DNS for domain authentication. Without an authenticated domain, your well-crafted campaigns will land in spam or get rejected, as Gmail and Yahoo are tightening security for their users by not allowing emails from unauthenticated sender domains through.
Once you've authenticated your domain in Zoho Campagins, you'll see the green tick marks for SPF and DKIM.
 
If you've already authenticated your domain, you can verify if SPF, DKIM, and DMARC are all configured properly. If you need to reconfigure them, do so immediately in your domain provider.

Holiday hygiene

Do a deep check on your lists in Zoho Campaigns. Find inactive contacts and those to whom you haven't sent any campaigns and remove them so you don't end up sending them campaigns—because there's a chance they can suddenly open your campaigns and unsubscribe or mark you as spam, thereby impacting your email deliverability. 

You can access the inactive contacts using the pre-built filters available in Zoho Campaigns.
Use external list cleaning services to find invalid contacts. Don't purchase mailing lists and import them to Zoho Campaigns. Also, remove any unused segments so you don't accidentally send campaigns to those contacts.

Verify your opt-in 

Ensure the option to unsubscribe is placed in a clear and visible place so they can quickly opt out of your campaigns if they aren't interested.

Go to Settings -> Manage Opt-in to enable double opt-in.

Always adhere to the CAN-SPAM act. You can always send test campaigns from Zoho Campaigns to validate whether:
  • Opt-in and unsubscribe links work properly.
  • Content is rendered properly for different devices and email clients.
  • Images and URLs work correctly.

Be vigilant 

Constantly monitor metrics related to your campaigns using our Reports module so you can understand how your campaigns are performing with your audience. You can track clicks, opens, bounces, unsubscribes, and other key performance indicators. Realign your sending patterns based on that data. You can also use Google Postmaster Tool to monitor analytics specifically for Gmail recipients. Also, don't forget to check if your domain has been blacklisted during this busy period using tools like MxToolbox or Spamhaus.

Keep your designs ready 

Because you'll be sending holiday-themed campaigns, it's better to plan in advance the types of designs you're going to use for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas, and New Year.

Zoho Campaigns offers a wide range of pre-designed email templates that you can use immediately. If you need to customize them, you can use our built-in drag-and-drop template editor. Browse our Holidays, Seasons, and Deals & Offers templates to get started or get ideas. Check out this Marketer's Space post for a quick overview of themed templates. 



Holiday marketing doesn't have to be chaotic. With proper warm-up, clean lists, solid authentication, and ready-to-go designs, you can run successful campaigns without stress.
Happy marketing, and happy holidays!

Regards,
Sai Prashanth
User Education
Zoho Campaigns